A 'toon For The Big Kids

Animaniacs Has The Usual Audience Of Youngsters, But The Sophisticated Humor Attracts Adults As Well.

April 22, 1995|By ANITA GATES New York Times News Service

The owner of Marcy's Department store is furious. "Maybe they let chickens play Santa in Arkansas," he shouts, "but that's not how we do things in New York City."

There has been no previous reference to Arkansas in this holiday cartoon, nor will there be a subsequent one. There will be, however, a reindeer (actually a pigeon with antlers) named Pesto and a musical number, Slippin' on the Ice, sung to the tune of Singin' in the Rain.

This is Animaniacs, the second most popular children's series on television (outranked only by Mighty Morphin Power Rangers), now in its second season on Fox.

What's unusual is the show's popularity with adults. More than 21 percent of the weekday audience (4 p.m., Monday through Friday) and more than 23 percent of the Saturday morning (8 a.m.) viewers are 25 or older.

The show has a large and loyal Internet news-group following, with fans exchanging thoughts electronically on laundry tips for fading Animaniacs T-shirts and the latest parody lyrics.

"I got hooked on the show immediately," says Jay Maynard, 34, a systems programmer from Houston, who discovered it on a weekday when he was at home sick. "The thing that caught me is that it's literally full of jokes that no 10-year-old would ever get."Then why do 10-year-olds, not to mention 4-year-olds, watch? "There's enough slapstick physical comedy to keep them happy."

Now Maynard tapes the show daily. "I have developed a crush on Dot," he says. "Her personality is everything I'm looking for in a woman - witty, intelligent, outspoken, assertive."

The Warner brothers (Yakko and Wakko) and the Warner sister (Dot) are the series stars, but the 30-minute show includes cartoons starring other characters who exist in their own universes just as Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck always have.

The Warner siblings are the favorite characters of many viewers, but not all. Jean MacCurdy, president of Warner Brothers Animation, professes a preference for Pinky and the Brain, two laboratory mice who plot nightly to take over the world. "And they're Steven's favorites," MacCurdy adds. That would be Steven Spielberg, the show's executive producer.

Yakko, Wakko and Dot, who apparently were locked in the water tower on Warner's Burbank lot many years ago because of misbehavior, escape periodically to have adventures that are a combination of visual gags so old they reek of homage (that's what they are, says MacCurdy) and wordplay.

In one episode, set in a candy store, the owner asks the trio (there is some debate about what kind of animals the Warners are) what they'd like. "Well, world peace would be nice," one answers. "And a Chevrolet in every driveway." Sometimes the humor is all verbal, and somewhat insiderish. Yakko: "It's that time again."Dot: "To make fun of the Disney Channel?" Yakko: "If you can't say something nice, you're probably at the Ice Capades."

Skippy Squirrel, another character with his own segments, always wants his Aunt Slappy, who says things like "Oh, for the love of Al Gore" and "All right already, Mr. Story Editor," to read him a bedtime story. When she takes Skippy to see the classic movie Bumbie, the Dearest Deer, he is so upset by the death of Bumbie's mother that Aunt Slappy takes him to visit the actress who played her. The actress is quite old now, lives in a trailer park and brags about having dated George Jetson in her youth.

No one at Warner objected to Animaniacs carrying on the tradition of cartoon violence. Characters get blown up by fireworks and by chemistry sets, squashed by vehicles and hit over the head by objects five times their size.

As MacCurdy says, "Warner Brothers cartoons from the beginning have been based on classic comedy - Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy - and the physical nature of that."